The Ezra Klein Show4 Mar 2025

The Government Knows AGI is Coming

Artificial general intelligence — an A.I. system that can beat humans at almost any cognitive task — is arriving in just a couple of years. That’s what people tell me — people who work in A.I. labs, researchers who follow their work, former White House officials. A lot of these people have been calling me over the last couple of months trying to convey the urgency. This is coming during President Trump’s term, they tell me. We’re not ready.

One of the people who reached out to me was Ben Buchanan, the top adviser on A.I. in the Biden White House. And I thought it would be interesting to have him on the show for a couple reasons: He’s not connected to an A.I. lab, and he was at the nerve center of policymaking on A.I. for years. So what does he see coming? What keeps him up at night? And what does he think the Trump administration needs to do to get ready for the AGI — or something like AGI — he believes is right on the horizon?

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:

“Machines of Loving Grace” by Dario Amodei

“Ninety-five theses on AI” by Samuel Hammond

“What It Means to be Kind in a Cruel World” by The Ezra Klein Show with George Saunders

Book recommendations:

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn

Rise of the Machines by Thomas Rid

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Efim Shapiro and Aman Sahota. Our supervising editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Switch and Board Podcast Studio.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(541)

Intelligence Isn't Power

At the center of the country’s debates over artificial intelligence is a simple but hard question: What kind of technology is this?Is A.I. a kind of “alien mind”? Are we unleashing a new species on th...

9 Okt 1h 1min

‘This Is Nuts.’ An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit.

Last week, David Robinson resigned from OpenAI. He’d been in charge of writing the safety reports for new models and came to believe that OpenAI and the broader artificial intelligence industry lack t...

7 Okt 1h 11min

Is the World Getting Uglier?

President Trump and the modern right have a theory of beauty. You see it in Trump’s gilded Oval Office, his imagined arch and his executive order requiring classical and traditional styles for certain...

2 Okt 1h 7min

Bill Gates’s Blunt Warning on A.I.

Bill Gates thinks A.I. alarmism hasn’t gone far enough. He believes the years ahead will be marred by catastrophic cyberattacks, bio-terrorism and mass job loss unless the government acts, because he...

29 Sep 1h 14min

What Does Abdul El-Sayed Believe?

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, has been one of the most argued-over candidates this election cycle. If he wins, he’d be the first-ever Muslim senator, and he’s face...

25 Sep 1h 33min

Jensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far

Jensen Huang might just be the single most influential person in artificial intelligence today.Huang is the chief executive of Nvidia, the company that designs nearly all the chips and infrastructure ...

23 Sep 1h 47min

We Can't Lose Control of A.I.

Fears of out-of-control A.I. have reached a boil over the last few weeks, and several industry executives have called for a coordinated slowdown of A.I. development. But if our goal is to control A.I....

20 Sep 31min

The ‘But China!’ Dilemma Driving the A.I. Race

America is waking up to the critical risks posed by artificial intelligence. But every conversation about possible regulation tends to hit the same wall: “Well, what about China?”Chinese A.I. models a...

15 Sep 1h 5min